In this Chapter, we open with an issue: IS there any
word from the Lord! It comes in an historical setting, it shows itself to be far
from an hysterical setting, to which some modern false prophets draw near, as
they adumbrate their own ideas, infiltrating Christianity, or seeking to subvert
it, make it a carrier for some other program, like African slaves in the USA
cotton fields, or Chinese virtual slaves in many a factory, or Russian ones in
Siberia, as if doctrine had made them so, and not lust as a father for the
disease of the soul called Communism, that blatant abuser of man by man, as wild
as the worst excesses of any other irrational frivolity of mind, and tragedy of
heart in the blighted history of this race, humankind, in its massive
unkindness, as it has populated this earth.

It is not as if God has not provided: His gifts in
brain, brawn, integral communications systems both inside the body and in the
inter-personal field, in environmental wonder - these have been munificent to
the point of awe.

It is not as if He has let man go:

He has carefully and
sometimes progressively as well as processively
(and both together in the
plagues on Egypt in the day of Moses*1) rebuked.

He has appealed. He has used
one nation as an example,
both in blessing and in cursing, as shown so
explicitly in Deuteronomy 28-29,

He has traced the results for that nation, in
both domains
(as promised in Amos 3:7, and shown in Deuteronomy 30-33, Leviticus
26, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah) in a prodigious fashion.

He has drawn attention to this fact overall, in
Isaiah 44-45, and

He has rebuked unbelief, and foolish
autonomy in man, in Isaiah 41, 43, 48.

He has shown the evidence that cannot be
overcome, but only overlooked
by those hypnotised by themselves, their plans and
their blind folly in failing
to realise who and what they are - and are not.

He
has pinpointed it again and again.

He has come to this earth as a Man.
He has
shown man what he is like by what he did to Him who came.

He has foretold the
coming, its date, the reaction of the Jewish State,
of the world, and the times
in detail which come near to the time for His return
to complete the manifest
Messianic mission, foretold for generations and millenia.

He has provided exceedingly well.

Today we are looking at some of the exemplifications
and indications of the Almighty, from His word. We peer into history, mainly
ancient, but then with sudden emphasis on modern parallels and indeed,
fulfilments as we approach, like a raft on Niagara River, near the famed Falls,
leading to the sudden descent which this world faces because of its constant friction,
failure, lack of faith in the Almighty, refusal of His written word, verified
and validated past all measure*2, of His
living word, the Lord of glory, viciously treated, gloriously vindicated and
soon to be back with mankind. This ? it is after the fulfilment of the final
rigors of man's pathological spirit and inane wanderings ANYWHERE except where the
Lord points.

We proceed to see the opposite, the apposite,
exemplification of abiding, obeying and not straying, of the glory of the Lord,
in triumphs immeasurable, kindness unfathomable.

It is not so very hard when you think of it. Many
refuse His discipline, like weaklings trying to enter in the football team,
preferring to stay weak. They
refuse His oversight, like those who WILL not have anyone to coach them. They
refuse His morals, like those whose ethics NO ONE can determine, while they USE
His gifts, which no man can begin to equal, in body, in spirit, in mind, to defy
His name, or defile His word and mislead many.

It has an end. Before it comes, it is well to
consider it, and something of the beginnings as well.

Surrounded by enemies, shrinking into famine, a very sieve for sin, as if
collecting acid rain, King Zedekiah was not lacking in boldness. He followed the
practices of his brother, King Jehoiakim despite his dire end, and added his own
reckless renegacy. Thus he both failed to hear Jeremiah after his 21 year old
institution as King, and feared nothing about Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon,
who had already taken King Jehoiakin to Babylon, where he would have a 37 year
captivity before things ameliorated a little.

One
might have thought that he would think twice before breaking the law of God, the
lore of wisdom in rebelling as a weak kingdom while holding the Lord well apart,
against a powerful one. After all, it was in terms of that invasive king,
Nebuchadnezzar that he had been placed on the throne, and by the word of the
prophet, Jeremiah he might have kept it and glorified God, being guided to be
more like his princely father, Josiah, who needed no title to show regality, and
having all power to do the will of God, had effectively USED it.

However King Zedekiah did nothing of the sort, rebelling
against 1) God's law, 2) Jeremiah's counsel and 3) the King of the captivity.
You might have thought, then, that these things being so, with three rebellions,
one against the source of power and victory, one against the counsel of kindness
and a third against the earthly tyrant, that the clashing roar of these stormy
waves might have awakened him, if not sharply, then perhaps just a little.

It is so with many. They ask why they have neurosis,
incapacity, no sense of power, of peace, of program, of progress, or even of
meaning; they attack others being jealous, the State being exasperated with life
and unwilling to recognise the good things provided or even themselves, their
duties, as if maddened by their displacement. Here they become spiritually
displaced persons, in whom the fire of fury and frustration works; and what they
will do next, who can tell, but the Lord! They leave the wife, ignore the beauty
of the co-operation that was, for the interests of the lust or temper of the
moment, and sail off after decades of wifely service, in a selfishness so
profound, that it is like a lobotomy, a cutting of part of the brain, in
brainless ingratitude and ceaseless preoccupation with self-centred desires.

Zedekiah was an ancient example of a modern disease.

It is therefore both amazing, in terms of principle, and
yet not at all surprising in terms of statistics, that when the Lord gave an
MORAL order, through the prophet Jeremiah in the very midst of the wars coming
more and more freely to engulf little Judah, once a great nation but now
increasingly depraved, especially since King Manasseh, that masterpiece of
corruptive wickedness – though he DID repent, that Zedekiah took one more step.
Which was this ?

The prophet Jeremiah, in the name of the Lord, indicated that the people were
misusing slaves. They were treating them inhumanly and not according to the law.

A massive slave release was accordingly mandated. Having
violated the conditions given, they were now to dismiss from slavery all the
male and female slaves. Since they had not honoured the code for liberation in
its time, therefore now they were to free all AT ONCE. In the fear of their
unprepossessing situation, they acted speedily, setting them free.

A
wave of realism, if not repentance, surged across the land. Was it possible that
now, as in the day of righteous Reformer, King Josiah, they would return to the
Lord and find both strength and solace, meaning and might ? It was. Yet it did
not happen. Seeing their unjust profits diminish, their power reduced, their
pride and importance deleted, their ease eroded, why they turned back and put
the released slaves back into servitude again!

Such is the topsy-turvy recklessness of those borne along in the winds of fury,
both lifted up and cast down, simultaneously, or if you prefer, in movements so
near to each other that they were almost like a super-quick dance. Ambiguity,
changeableness, self-centred skating was IN!

To
be weak is bad; to be of impure heart is worse; to vacillate and respond now to
self-interest and now to decency, obeying God and winking at it anon, this is
like crossing a road of violent traffic while reading a book, and giving
sensitive attention to the mobile phone, while at the same time, regarding with
pleasure the flight of birds to distant trees.

The
penalty did not delay, for this vacillatory demise of virtue. The Lord said this
(34:17):

"Therefore thus says the LORD:

'You have not obeyed Me in proclaiming liberty,
every one to his brother and every one to his neighbour.

'Behold, I proclaim liberty to you,'
says the LORD -
'to the sword, to pestilence , and to famine!
And I will deliver you to trouble among all the kingdoms of the earth.' "

A
further 'deliverance' was into the hands of their enemies!

Thus the concept of deliverance the people had treated
meanly, calculatingly, half-heartedly, and then revoking it, they forced slaves
back once more to their illicit and heartless treatment of them. Deliverance ?
Why for them, it was to restore a means of wealth, irrespective of human
suffering, and against the law of God.

Deliverance ? since they thought so much of it, then, as
to deliver the slaves, if only temporarily, and so little as to bring them back
into anti-social suppression, twisting the terms and mocking their meaning, then
they could systematically endure what they gave, and acquire for themselves what
they had bestowed on the slaves. If that was their mercy, they could experience
it!

THEY, yes they too could have 'deliverance' a dancing, glancing term, and
themselves enjoy the wonder of a short deliverance (until the enemy destroyed
their nation, at least temporarily – exiling them for 70 years, as foretold in
Jeremiah 25). Then many could experience even more deliverance, the kind that
does not count, and find the meaning of a new subjection as the enemy forces
swept them aside, as if they were scarcely human, and used them for their own
profit and power, pride and love of subjugating other people.

Both Moslem armies and Romanist-directed ones have performed such
SUBMISSION-and- control scenarios over hundreds of years, in seized lands and
nations; but then they have found something of the other side of submission.
Such was the case :

a)
when
Hitler carried off much of Europe like a despised bride, to misuse her,
and
then Stalin extended the time for many, as also

b)
when Islamic power was broken in
World War II, after threatening Europe with its force,
or as

c)
when the Vatican, after centuries of allowing the depraved horror
of the Romanist Inquisition, was a little rump left to the power of the
papacy,
after a national movement in Italy.

These are but illustrations, from far and nearer. God simply does not like
oppression, is not favourable towards man strangling man heartlessly; and while
He reserves the right of judgment of sustained and chronic evil (to let its
corruption go on, can be more unkind that to abort the whole thing), yet He may
choose to teach slave-loving oppression, what the American Civil War so
poignantly taught about the dynamite of sensitive sorrow and suffering hidden in
oppression. Whatever started it, this was a dynamic within it!

Back to Israel:
In the very midst of the slavery episode, indeed a little later, you find this
same King, who reigned at that time, asking the prophet this little question, to
which we now come.

THE
PREVARICATOR WHO ASKS FOR PRAYER

Jeremiah
37:3

In Jeremiah 37:3, the King requests prayer. Many request
prayer. Do they consider changing their ways, or do they ask for woe while
continuing as if obsession had removed the eye of the soul, and their codes and
conduct were invisible even to themselves, blinded not only to what happened
outside, but to what is occurring within, in their own hearts, as well! If you
want prayer, it is time to want holiness, the pardon of repentance, to seek
godliness and His glory, the payment to your account of the righteousness the
Lord who to faith gives freely, having paid the ransom price in Christ Jesus.
What is the use of putting on mosquito protection fluids, if you insist on
sitting in the middle of a jungle swarming with the things!

Still, Zedekiah approached the prophet. The reply ? At
about that time, the Egyptian army came to assault Jerusalem,
but having other problems, suddenly left. Don't think this is deliverance, said
Jeremiah, for the Chaldeans, the
Babylonians
"shall come back and fight against this city, and take it and burn it with fire.
We saw last time that even if the whole Babylonian army, each one, lay wounded,
so vile was the flavour of the dis-faith of Jerusalem, that this sick army would
even at that, rise up and conquer it! (Jeremiah 37:10). The King had his answer.

This IS the answer when without faith in the
self-revealed God of creation, history and redemption, shorn of the
self-accrediting*2
Bible, man vacillates between religions, entwining now this and now that phase,
mode or model, exploiting and expressing now this and now that, whether in
Europe, America, Australia or any other part of this globe, whose God does not
weary, not does He change. His ways are eternal, expressed and immutable
(Malachi 3:6, Habakkuk 3:6, Acts 2:23, 1:7ff., Revelation 22:18-19, Matthew
5:17-20, Ephesians 1:10,Galatians 1 and 3, Isaiah 59:21).

But let us return to Zedekiah.

THE
UNSPIRITUAL EAR THAT QUESTIONS GOD
WHILE DEFYING HIS TRUTH

Jeremiah
37:17,
38:14ff.

Things developed. We also noted recently that Jeremiah went to claim land
outside the city, was deemed to be about to side with the enemy, or defect to
it, was put in prison, and there languished. The King, who had not been sparing
the prophet thus far, though not in entire control (even when one is NOT in
entire control of events, one can use what measure of control ONE DOES HAVE, and
so show sincerity; and indeed, often people seeing courage in someone, will
take heart and arise en masse to seek the good thing hitherto avoided!) now
sought a favour. Now he secretly called and interviewed Jeremiah, in his own
house!

"Is there any word from the LORD ?"
asked he.

The
effrontery of sitting in the vomit of vice and asking if there was any hygiene!

Jeremiah gave the word at once:

"There is. You shall be delivered into the hand of the
king of Babylon."

He asked for the reason of his own imprisonment. But he
did not ignore the plight of the King. How often does God PLEAD with people to
abandon evil, seek mercy, show kindness, be merciful to the poor, to act in
faith and follow Him!

Yet
the words in the midst of the trouble often seem like distant cannon fire to the
tormented souls that equivocate and seek to make of God an accomplice, a
participant after the fact, in their evils and sins. They do not heed: they want
only what they prescribe, and act as if God were a petrol station, to be blamed
if not providing the energy of cars, to the waiting vehicles, at a minimum
price. As to driving ? of course, THAT is their affair. For them, God is merely
a serviceable supply source.

Later, having been treated a little better, though still kept in imprisonment,
and having given further warning to those who insisted on not surrendering but
staying in the doomed city, Jeremiah was brought into a horrible pit, without
prospect of food or drink. See him now: From this, taken by the mercy of the
eunuch, Ebed-Melek, he is once more brought to the King. Mercifully, he tells
the King of the deliverance if they would surrender to the invading forces. The
King would not do so; but notice the language of the prophet.

"Please,"
he cries, "obey the voice of the
LORD which I speak to you. So it shall l be well with you, and your soul shall
live."

Yet
the King would not. IMPLORED in the torrent of mercy, sought in the spirit of
love and lovingkindness, YET THE KING WOULD NOT LISTEN. Again, despite this
condition of his heart, he still once more took the step of ASKING Jeremiah,
seeking some spiritual good. Thus the prophet PLED with the King: PLEASE, he
said, in tender concern which vice did not eliminate, from the heart, please
do as I tell you from God.

In
Isaiah 48:18ff., you likewise see the exclamations of mercy sent away, the
tenderness of the pleas of God.

" 'Come near to Me, hear
this:

I have not spoken in secret
from the beginning;

From the time that it was, I
was there.

And now the Lord God and His
Spirit

Have sent Me.'

"Thus says the Lord, your
Redeemer,

The Holy One of Israel:

'I
am the Lord your God,

Who teaches you to profit,

Who leads you by the way you
should go.

'Oh,
that you had heeded My commandments!

Then your peace would have
been like a river,

And your righteousness like
the waves of the sea.

Your descendants also would
have been like the sand,

And the offspring of your
body like the grains of sand;

His name would not have been
cut off

Nor destroyed from before
Me.

'Go forth from Babylon!

Flee from the Chaldeans!' "

These were no mere words, but each one of His supplications to errant and
erratic man is like a nail in His own flesh, which He certainly felt. What He
suffered there, is the physical and inwardly personal in its outward
expression; on the Cross its pain was visible. Here it is the laboratory
exhibit of the pleas of His heart.

What then ?
SEPARATE from the sovereignty of sin, and do not remain in that city. HEED the
word of God and do not remain where it is not heeded, in any Church, and does
not rule. HALLOW the name of God and be in the fear of His name, for the fear
of the Lord is clean. Be innovative in many things, but never with the word of
God, to exchange it for asininity, to befoul it with unbelief, to be
inoperative while it operates, like a paralysed army. Consider the merciful
pity and the wonder of wisdom in the Lord, and follow Him.

You can say as much about divine sovereignty as you please, but nothing takes
the emotional force from the love which wishes that all might repent and come
to the knowledge of the truth. His effecting of salvation is no testimony to
His rejection of others unsaved, but of His refusal to force on any whose
heart is not moved, the implementation of salvation where it IS found. Then
His relief and rest, it is not taken and so the tension with truth is not
resolved: grace is wasted.

If anyone reading these words is not yet taken into the heart of the Lord, is
mistaken in shiftless unspirituality, then repent now, receive the love of the
Saviour, and being His, soar into His kingdom, sitting in heavenly places with
Him whose presence is then the ULTIMATE ENVIRONMENT (Ephesians 2:6-8) for the
human heart.

╬

Thus we have considered the largely negative side of the WORD from the Lord.
Now we come with joy to the positive side, exemplified in King Hezekiah and
King Josiah, but in so many more nearer by far, to our own time.

PART II

"IS THERE ANY
WORD FROM THE LORD ?"

Jeremiah 37:17
with Jeremiah 23:33ff.,

34:8ff. Isaiah 37:1ff., 38:14ff., II Kings 22:12ff., James 2

THE FAITH
THAT ACTS AND PREVAILS
ON THE PROMISES OF GOD …

WHERE WORDS ARE
GIVEN A HEARING
IN THE HEART DOMAIN

I Hezekiah’s Trip to the Temple, His Heart’s March to the Lord

Take the case of King Hezekiah as seen in Isaiah 37ff.. HE is told of
the coming onslaught of an arrogant, cruel and haughty King, Sennacherib, and
what does he do ? Yes, the King of Israel, he too goes to seek the Lord, a wise counsel.
He does it in person: that is wiser still! He presents
the letter sent to him, and to the Lord goes the evidence, carefully arranged;
and he seeks Him (Psalm 27:8-14)*3.

To the prophet Isaiah the situation is made known, and Hezekiah without
self-confidence, with no semblance of self-esteem, but deeming God most able to
answer prayer, seeks Him where He may be found, in poverty of spirit,
expectation of power and supplication on the basis of what he as King sought for
his mission and his people, but for the name, honour and glory of the Lord.

The Lord gave an answer to the challenge of Assyria, to the swagger from their
King Sennarcherib, a point by point mocking and devastating word of irony and
dismissal. That was the first part, through the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 37-38).

The second part of the divine answer came a little later.

The army of the Assyrians soon was smashed in an amazing divine intervention. It
matters little what means, directly miraculous or systematically prepared long before for
outcome at this moment in the foreknowledge of God: the thing happened to the
army in view at the time when it mattered, causing a massive loss both of
personnel and prestige. It came in the face of direct challenge to the God of
gods and Lord of lords, which implied He was one of the mob, and His people
could be cleaned up precisely as any other.

Really ?
Precisely as it had done at the
Exodus from Egypt, so in timing, guidance to His people and overcoming power, He
responded.

Pride is contemptible: it merely exalts what has been given, and how far all of
us fall below what might have been achieved for God, if we had known Him from
the first, and followed Him with relish at the outset. Those poor in spirit are
the blessed (Matthew 5), the OPPOSITE to those seeking by all means to survive,
to have self-belief and to overcome for the sake of their persona's
accomplishment. TO THIS MAN, the Lord declares in Isaiah 66, will I look, to
him who is "poor and of a
contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word."

Notice that it is not all emotion, spiritual hijinks of an athletic kind,
dramatic announcements of a 'word' and so forth. It is God who will ACT (cf.
Isaiah 64:4-5), and actually MEET with the person who
"rejoices and does righteousness." Stay and obey, repent and receive
pardon, seek vision and vigour and do the will of God: there is no problem. It
is He who acts. We serve: He performs (cf. Psalm 57:2, 72:18).

v"Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
do not lean to your own understanding,
acknowledge Him in ALL your ways,
and HE WILL DIRECT YOUR STEPS!"

╬That
is the word of the Lord from Proverbs 3 (capitals added).

It is a capital word, from the capital of the
Kingdom of Heaven, in its Eternal Word, who with His Father is its coming Temple in
Himself (Rev. 21:22),
the light of the World, Jesus Christ. The curse that has captured 'nature' -
that is man's terrestrial environment at the created level - this, Christ has captured
and done so selectively, for all who come to His liberation. Where ? there on the Cross
He cancelled sin for those who truly receive Him. Some may wish, like reluctant
inmates of concentration camps in Germany as the US Army rushed into them at the
close of WW II, to remain in those unholy hospices. Those however who receive the
liberation of Christ, get it: no one else.

Hezekiah, then, had a dynamic word from the Lord: it is He
who spoke AND acted! We come now to a later King of Judah, in fact near the end
of the line before the Babylonian captivity: Josiah. Judah of the
South had escaped the Assyrian onrush (though Samaria
with its idolatry was ruined); yet warned and not heeding, Judah was kept till a
later Empire brought up its own day of judgment. Mercifully, it was in that
instance, not permanent but for 70 years exile ( foretold by Jeremiah in Ch.
25). It was this together with the devastations that lay between! lyrically
exposed by a grief-stricken Jeremiah in Lamentations. But let us consider
Josiah and how in his case, as with Hezekiah before him, deliverance was wrought
by the word of the Lord.

It can come,
issued into history like a CO's orders to his officers, in ways past finding
out. Like mist it comes, like growth it comes. It must be sought, the Lord's
action on His own promises; and they stand, and so do those who rely on Him, and
on His word so expressed (cf. II Peter 1).

II
Josiah’s Kindly Death, Once the Mission is Manifestly Complete
A Timely Transference to Glory

Josiah’s case was unlike that of Hezekiah: for that was one which threatened his
life, yet the potential tragedy was turned into epochal triumph, and his life
long continued after this. He was not early met with a threat of this kind.
Rather it was complacency amid sounder seeming circumstances, or pride, that was
the challenge, magnificently met by the boy King, Josiah.

In fact,
over 18 years his glorious reign was to include vital elements, a sort of
Reformation, such as this world received especially in the 15th and
16th centuries A.D., when a millenium of developing superstitions and
traditions had made the ‘temple’ of testimony to be corrupt and cornered for
many, in the money-seeking Romanistic body, one loaded with unloveliness and
corrupt papacy. Josiah met the case, as later in the seasons of history did Wycliffe, that morning star of the
Reformation, as did the beloved and burnt John Huss, and Luther, Calvin, and
Tyndale, living on into the 16th..

With
Josiah, a vast change came upon the land. He purged evil, removed idols,
cleansed and repaired the Temple, ensured honesty in accounting, sought the
people’s hearts to return to the Lord, and purged sexual deviation in religion,
showing a consistent and insistent zeal rarely found. From a young age, he had
been a king in waiting, waiting on the Lord, ready to be tested. Just as
Hezekiah, some reigns before him had thrust out rubbish from the horribly abused
temple, which was shamelessly polluted from the syncretistic evil of his own
earthly father – the appalling Ahaz, a spur to anti-ecumania now: so Josiah
brought back a keen sense of the presence and mercy of the Lord. Moving in sober,
spiritual, godly approach to Him, his thrust was in keeping with zeal for His word, testifying of
His pardoning mercies in a vast worship occasion with historic impact.

In
the midst of his operations, there FOLLOWED a test supreme. With him, the
early beginning was the challenge, and the fruits came after this test, like a
personal examination while still young. Now a further test of a sudden kind came
to his chosen, zealous godliness.

How did this test come ? In cleansing the temple and repairing it, there had
been found a copy of the the Book of the Law which brought to mind things long
disregarded to the point that the master copy appeared not even known as to its
precise location in the temple. Indeed, as for many a Bible in many a home now,
it was a ceremonial object; and worse, a forgotten one; and in this case, like a
Bible left in the garage and obscured by rubbish set upon it!

Josiah did not institute a committee, instal the equivalent of a Senate Enquiry,
appointment, or make a Royal Commission to sum up the whole position in 400
pages. Instead he tore his clothes, symbol of a vast and inner distress and
horror at tragedy, of woe before the Lord; and he wept. A young man of 8 on his
accession, at 26, he was tender-hearted enough not to be anaesthetised by the
dignity of his position, or stirred by the dreamy scent of royal succession and
power. He asked someone to enquire from the prophetess, Huldah.

Back came the word:

“Because your heat was tender,

and you humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard

what I spoke against this place and against it inhabitants,

that they would become a desolation and a curse,

and you tore your clothes, and wept before Me,

I also have heard you, says the LORD.

Surely, therefore, I will gather you to your fathers,

and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace;

and your eyes shall not see all the calamity which I will bring
on this place.”

THAT, it was to come; but God did not see fit to let His friend Josiah inhabit
the land when that sort of hideous revolt came to do so. He was therefore taken
before that came!

Soon to come upon the thrust of the land, its ways, there would be a swerving
off the straight road once more. They would be driven by
a sort of engine of injury to the soul, just as Tiananmen in China, at the time
appointed, corruption served this purpose, not only to the bodies of the young
slain, but to the heart of the nation. Such climaxes arrive unbidden by actual
voices, but called for by moral accountability and evil desire, when secondary
things take precedence, and the presidency of God becomes dimmed and diverted by
the pressure of man and his events. Since this is mere delusion, judgment calls.
It does not always leave first its calling card, especially when those are deaf
to its initial calls.

Indeed, the evil in Israel at that time, was soon to grow, till there was no
remedy. It is reviewed with this conclusion in II Chronicles 36, reaching the
fateful point as seen in verse 16. By then, Josiah have fulfilled a magnificent
mission, was long gone where his heart rested and his soul continued a life
endless in scope, with the eternal God of creation and of redemption. It is not
only a question of the quality of life while one lives, but of the eternity of
consummated life, when one leaves this world, eternal life in time untamed by
termination, even to everlasting! (John 3, 4, 5, 6, Titus 2-3, Ephesians 1:11,
II Timothy 1:9ff., Job 19, Psalm 21, 145).

It
is not how long you live, but whether YOU KNOW GOD AS YOU LIVE, and doing His
will, adorn for ever the commission of Christ, like clothes that respond to His
own movements, and follow Him with joy (cf. Isaiah 61:10, Jeremiah 13): it is
this which matters, not date of moving from here to the next world in Christ.

III THE
REALISM THAT RESISTS EMPTY FAITH

AND
FAITHLESS EMPTINESS ALIKE

James has
some words on this region of life. Having told us that all good
things are gifts from God, who of His own will has caused Christians to be born
again, he then traces this whole area of unseemly pretence, pretension and
insincerity, obvious nonsense which many dare to practice in the very face of
the Lord.

Abraham, the epistle of James tells us, was indeed justified for BELIEVING GOD,
and it was accounted to him for righteousness. The reality of faith being
present, then the covenant of assurance, God at once enacted (Genesis
15:6,10ff.). Equivocation had no place. Faith acted, God acted: accounts met the
light. Faith enabled the relationship to become active, dynamic, directive,
protective and when later Abraham was tested, in graphic mode (Gen. 22) – would
he even offer his son ? a ram was provided to depict cover for his son
and indeed himself. When you take it, it enters your spiritual blood-stream. It
is ALL GIFT (Romans:25ff., Ephesians. 2, John 6:47-54), propounded
by God, received by faith, sealed by grace.

It
was the ram which was thus provided as cover for his son and indeed for his own
life. Making the gift dramatic, its nature as donation from deity apparent, God
had even caused it to be caught in a thicket to make it easy to get, just as
Christ was willingly caught in a thicket of ecclesiastical apparatchiks, a mafia
of murderers, daring to use the name of the Lord as if it had something to do
with their lives.

That 'catching' too was planned (cf. Psalm 22, Isaiah 49-55, Psalm 16, 69,
Daniel 9:24-26). It is all GIFT by grace (Romans 6:23, Ephesians 2:5-8).
Nothing less could save any in polluted man’s plight (Romans 1-2, Eph.
4:17ff.); and received by faith, the thing is not grievous!

vIt is gift OF
DIVINE RIGHTEOUSNESS through abundance of grace (Romans 5:17).

vIt is a gift of
salvation BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH (Ephesians 2:1-12).

Not
merely is the thing a gift; the mode is grace, undeserved favour in method;
indeed, the cost is zero to the purse, but all to the heart. This must come to
surrender and render fealty to the Lord through faith (Luke 14:27ff.), so that
this gift of grace might be freely received,
just as it is freely paid for all concerned,
even as many as do receive Him (John 1:12, Ephesians 1). Reject it at your
peril; refuse repentance and perish!

There is a warning. It is this. When faith, instead of being employed as a
reception committee, is used as a smoke-screen, and a verbal prod to God,
then the case is far different. If you really do BELIEVE, if your faith is not a
DEAD corpse rather than a spiritual dynamic, if you avoid trusting in your own
way and playing about with something you dare to call 'faith', but instead
receive objectively the Lord's Christ, the Christ of the Bible's testimony, then
with Abraham rejoice!

Yet if you are not showing this faith's reality by the team of your spiritual
horses moving determinedly to the desired end, what in the world do you think
you are doing! If you love, you don’t pretend. You don’t have to ‘work at it’.

It
flows. It needs no adornment; it exhibits itself naturally. To be sure it is not YOUR
WORKS which make the difference, but the attitude of heart which shows that
faith is a genuine condition, and not a verbal substitute for realism. ONLY God
does wondrous works (Psalm 72:18), and you need not try to imitate Him; but if
you DO have faith in Him, then look once more at Abraham, and what do you find ?
It is this.

When the
time of test came, he was willing to OFFER UP THE VERY MEANS OF DELIVERANCE,
even his son Isaac; for it was through Isaac that the whole testimonial train
was to run, to the Messiah, to blessing for all nations. He did not insist on
what HE considered had to happen, but on the word of God.

Yes,
there was a word of the Lord for him, which would test his trust in the power of
God and His faithfulness; and he passed that test.

The very
merits of the Messiah were thus able to come to Him in advance of the entire
payment at Calvary and through all that led up to this to make it operative, in
the sinless Christ (cf. Romans 4, esp. 21-25). Then, not in ram but in
Royalty, not in Isaac’s loss (Psalm 49:7,15), but truth’s gain, there came the
sacrifice to reach beyond any time, to cover all who are His (Galatians 6:14).

Thus was
it shown that his was not circumstantial faith, surrounded by possibilities and
sundered by probabilities. It was instead a faith in God transcending all such
things, and one which did not refuse translation into what SHOWED IT!

He
believed, he acted. He trusted, he travailed and he triumphed by grace; and
Isaac, ready to be lost, was found. Moreover, being found, he showed that
part of the way to the consummation in Christ, the sacrificial lamb in
Person, the necessary sacrifice to end all atonement, the eternal Redeemer to
end all redemption, granting eternal life: Lord over all lords, king over all
kings (Hebrews 7-10).

Accordingly, as the Lord shows through James 2, the faith which, if it
does not operate, is a dead kind of a thing, yet by contrast, being alive and authentic, in
Abraham showed itself living; and although of course the righteousness was given
to the patriarch WHEN the faith first operated as James indicates so clearly in
this 1:23, yet the reality of the faith was attested later, when the test came.
Faith without works is always dead.

You are saved without works (Romans 3:23ff., Galatians 3, 5, Ephesians 2), but
not without faith and faith works! It does not trust in its works; it does not
trust in the ammunition and praise God as a formal after-thought. It TRUSTS
(after all, it IS faith), relies God to DO what is needed, but praises God in
anticipation, in unmitigated joy of heart, and meets the test of purity of
motive because being alive, IT IS THERE!

Through faith, man is not using God to get an easy advantage (Christ did not
turn the stones to bread, taking no 'special case' arm-chair position, since He
was a real man, in humility tested in His incarnation). The man of faith is
believing in God to move through him and throughout his life, and that of
whomever else He may select, to ACHIEVE the needed result. HE will do it (Phil.
1: 6).

IS
THERE ANY WORD FROM THE LORD ? Remember the cry of King Zedekiah (Jeremiah
37:17), alas found fidgetting because his life was alive with unrepented sin! It
is not always that such a case arises; but what does arise is tested. Therefore
as Peter instructs us, let us not be dismayed by the trials and tests like fire,
that come; for God can purify what is mixed and secure what is clean (I Peter
1:7, 4:12-19).

Therefore as Peter instructs us, let us not be dismayed by the trials and tests
like fire that come, for God can purify what is mixed and secure what is clean
(I Peter 1:7, 4:12-19).

But again, let us answer the question. Is there a word from the Lord ?

Of course there is: it is ALL written, the
beginning, the core, the Christ Saviour, the suffering, the false sentence, the
crucifixion, the bodily resurrection*4, the
progress of this world in hideous regress*5, the signals that His
coming is near*6. It is all there: so set
about obeying it, following Him not in word only but in deed, not subverted or
subverting others by making up new morals, a new christ, like the sects, new
easy ways and alluring arm-chairs for watching some kind of 'spiritual' TV!
Work then, not to gain eternal life, but because you have gained it IF YOU HAVE
SAVING FAITH in the Lord Jesus Christ, God as man and alive from the dead and to
be KNOWN (John 17:1-3, Romans 10:9, I Corinthians 15:1-4ff.).

No amount
of words can turn a photograph into a person, so it is useless just to have
doctrinal jabber ALONE, and imagine this saves you. It is no less useless to
have a vague feeling, void of content, and with no authority from the word of
God. These areas must be conjoined, not disjoined. They are environmental
elements in the operation of biblical faith. The words refer to FACTS, to
ACTUALITIES, to GOD HIMSELF. Being referred to the realities of the Lord, you
find Him ... by faith (cf. John 5:39-40).

You do
not sit under the sign-post, like a prisoner regarding the shape of the hole in
the wall. You act on it. You then make the friendship of the most glorious Being
through the Person of Christ and the operation of His Holy Spirit (cf. John 16).
Cultivate His acquaintance, therefore, follow His word and behold ... you will
know. Does He not say it ?

v"He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves
Me.
And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father and I will love him and manifest
Myself to him …

v“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word and My Father will love
him,
and We will come to him and make Our home with him." Such is the way of God, true
from the first, available to the last, when judgment sits.

Such is the way of God, true from the first, available to the last, when
judgment sits.

It is well that with Him is pardon (Isaiah 55:6-7, Micah 7:19-20); and it is
well that pardon produce its fruits, as roots are formed, the plant of life is
set in the ground of faith and the water of the Spirit makes it grow (not the
faith, the plant).

Faith ? a minute seed of this is sufficient. It is the One in whom you
place it, that matters, the right One, the God of glory, creation, atonement,
pardon, reconciliation for man through redemption, the God of love, truth and mercy, who sent
His only begotten Son not as an image for spectacle, but as the Life that gives
itself in sacrifice, as an offering for sin, so that those who by faith plead grace
and free gift from
this, might be made anew, into new people (Romans 6:23, 5:17, Ephesians 2). Such
people, with hearts that receive, know and
find love, adoption as children of God (Ephesians 1:5), like the patriarch.
They find eternal life itself, and
transmit this love because it is simply too much to hold within.

These glorious verses of
reciprocity with the Redeemer, response to His call to His gracious presence,
encouragement and faith, continue like a million arrows, to reach with joy the
targets of many hearts. This part of Psalm 27 is as follows.

"When

Yousaid, 'Seek My face,'

My heart said to
You, 'Your face, Lord, I will seek.'

"Do
not hide Your face from me;

Do not turn Your
servant away in anger;

You have been my
help;

Do not leave me
nor forsake me,

O God of my
salvation.

When my father
and my mother forsake me,

Then the Lord
will take care of me.

"Teach
me Your way, O Lord,

And lead me in a
smooth path, because of my enemies.

Do not deliver
me to the will of my adversaries;

For false
witnesses have risen against me,

And such as
breathe out violence.

"Iwouldhavelostheart, unless I had believed

That I would see
the goodness of the Lord

In the land of
the living.

"Wait
on the Lord;

Be of good
courage,

And He shall
strengthen your heart;

Wait, I say, on the Lord!"

*3A

How beautiful it is for brethren to dwell
together in unity, or how good and pleasant it is (Psalm 133)! Yet how difficult
it is, as this 21st century develops, to discover those pearls of unity in
Christ, without departure from scripture either in the interests of ungodly and
presumptuous addition, subtract or mutation of the biblical text! How beautiful
are endeavours to heal the breaches, and how ugly those to ignore them, and let
them rend the ship, if it were possible!

Hence in The Bay
of Retractable Islands, much effort has been expended to seek more
unity on issues which never should have been grounds for division, for they are
arenas of wild bullishness in some cases, roaring extremes needlessly adopted,
as some aspect of the holy word of God is insensitively or even grossly and
damagingly rammed into the setting of that word, without regard for the rest of
it, and raucous noises tend to be made, as at a boxing ring, for this or that.

Ecumenical aspiration is good; ecumenical
desperation is bad. Ecumenical zeal is good; but the ecumenically surreal is
not. It is well called 'ecumania'. The spirit of this Age rages and is
confident, corruptive, corrosive, invasive, bold, arrogant and self-fancying,
putting aside the restrictions of yore, and indulging, even in the case of many
'churches' in such rank and hideous moral crimes IN THE NAME OF THE LORD that it
is hard to believe them not intoxicated. The Bible in such cases tends to become
a old cricket prize, set there for old times sake, invidiously disregarded.

Yes it goes, this corruption that dares in vain
to use the name of Jesus Christ, or His word. It was foretold (II Peter 2-3, I
Timothy 4, II Timothy 3-4, Acts 20, Matthew 24:24). By no means does this
require one to separate from ANYTHING; nor does it allow one to endure what is
rank rebellion from the word of God. Where the clear text is countermanded, or
addition or alteration of what it teaches is authorised, however, there is no
option but separation, if there is no yielding. See
Separation 1997. and

Every age has
its challenges: this, it is one of our own. The joy is this: that it is one of
the signals of His coming, this plenitude of sects, from Islam (combined from
Jewish and Christian sources), to the more recent, from Romanism to the fancies
of New Age. When the wildness of dissidence from the authority of the word of
God in the bible is rank, then it is time to avoid the ranks of what is of this
kind, and in peace to proceed in the Lord, as His coming draws near (cf.
Answers to QuestionsCh. 5). It is ALWAYS
good to abide in Him and in His words! See also SMR pp.
743ff. and
750Bff. (at '731').